


nothing hidden in your head

by serenityandtea



Category: BBC Radio 1 RPF, One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 21:16:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11859837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serenityandtea/pseuds/serenityandtea
Summary: Nick has a popstar cuddled up in his lap and ITV is showing Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.“You know,” Louis speaks up a couple minutes later, his hand stroking Stinky’s fur. “I always thought I’d rock a Slytherin tie. What do you reckon?”“I think you’d look great in-” Nick pauses. Yellow? Purple? “-blue?”





	nothing hidden in your head

**Author's Note:**

> Remember when Nick posted that Insta story of him watching Harry Potter? This is that, only with added Louis. This was basically written for Alice (and Jen), because she wanted cuddling and Nick taking the sorting hat quiz. What can I say, I live to serve. Thanks to Vee for reading this over, you're incredible.
> 
> Hope you enjoy it!

It’s no secret that Nick and his friends have always been very affectionate. Miquita spends more time in his lap than on the sofa when she’s over, him and Daisy cannot _not_ touch and hug when they’re in close proximity, he’s fallen asleep curled up around a sleepy Harry Styles on more than one occasion, and don’t even get him started on his bloody fake wedding to George. However, he’d never expected to add another One Direction member to that list. Alright, maybe Niall, because he definitely gives off some vibes of being down for a good ol’ cuddle, but definitely not Louis Tomlinson.

Yet here they are. Louis’ head is in his lap, Nick’s fingers are softly scratching his scalp, and Louis has wrapped his arm under and around Nick’s right leg, hugging him close to his chest. It should be slightly uncomfortable, but Nick is mostly amazed that his boyfriend is quiet and docile for once so he stays hush. If that means that his leg is slowly starting to hurt from the circulation being cut off too long, he’ll take it.

When Louis slowly turns his head to look up at him with a questioning look on his face, he realises he might have missed part of a conversation there.

“Hmm? Sorry, I missed that,” Nick says, moving Louis’ fringe out of his eyes. 

Louis sighs. “Did you seriously not hear any of that?”

Nick dodges the finger coming up to poke at his chin. “Not a word.”

Sometimes he zones out a bit when Louis is there, when he can actually touch the other man. It doesn’t happen too often, with Louis in the middle of promo season and in L.A. more often than not, so Nick likes to spend most of their time together just _looking_. Turns out, he’s terrible at looking and listening at the same time.

“I asked,” Louis starts with fake exasperation that Nick sees right through, “if it was alright if we watched Harry Potter after this. Fiz just texted me that it’s on and I haven’t seen it in ages.”

Honestly, as long as it isn’t Eurosport or the news, Nick is fine with whatever they watch.

“Sure, love.”

Louis flushes, but turns over on Nick’s lap again, pressing a quick kiss to Nick’s fingers when he rest them on Louis’ shoulder.

By the time the film has started, Louis is curled around Stinky Blob, his head still on Nick’s lap and both their teas going cold on the coffee table. His boyfriend seems to be completely engrossed in the film and while Nick has never gotten the appeal of magic and wizards and fantasy in general, he still squeezes Louis hand back whenever something exciting happens on screen.

“This one is my favourite,” Louis mumbles as Robert Pattinson is fake walking through the air. Or at least, Nick _thinks_ it’s Robert Pattinson. He’s in these films, isn’t he? He looks well young, though.

“It’s a good one,” Nick agrees.

“What’s yours?”

Nick racks his brain. How many of these films were made? Six? Seven? He’s only seen the first one with Colleen way back, but he’s had most of the actors in the studio more than once so he should know this bit of trivia.

“The sixth one,” he answers.

“You liked the Half-Blood Prince?” Louis asks, eyes still trained on the telly, but his voice sounds disbelieving. Nick pets his head.

“Loved it.”

Louis snorts at that, but keeps quiet, and Nick lets out a little sigh of relief when he doesn’t have to elaborate. There’s only so many ways he could say ‘I _loved_ the thing he did when that guy was there, you know? With the wand?’ and have the other man believe him.

“You know,” Louis speaks up a couple minutes later, his hand stroking Stinky’s fur. “I always thought I’d rock a Slytherin tie. What do you reckon?”

“I think you’d look great in-” Nick pauses. Yellow? Purple? “-blue?”

This time Louis pinches his thigh. “You’ve never actually seen a film, have you?”

He doesn’t sound extremely upset, a hint of fondness in his voice. Nick squeezes his neck once, just because he can.

“I saw the first one.”

“Back in 2001, I bet.”

That sounds about right. “Think so, yeah.”

“So you don’t even know what house you’re in?”

Louis flips over on his back, his head now dangerously close to Nick’s crotch. He shudders. His hand comes out to rest on Louis stomach, and Stinky finds his way back on the sofa after having jumped off with all the sudden movements. He quietly lies down, causing Pig to trot over as well and putting her nose on Louis’ leg.

Turns out Nick’s not the only one in this household enamoured with a twenty-five year old popstar.

“I think you’d make a fine Slytherin. Maybe even a Ravenclaw. I could see that. Definitely not Gryffindor, though.”

Nick doesn’t know if that’s a compliment or not. Aren’t Harry and his mates all in Gryffindor? It’s a good house to be in, right? “Isn’t Slytherin the house they all hate?”

Louis scoffs, poking Nick in the chest. “It’s all prejudice. Us Slytherins, we aren’t all bad. Harry is a Slytherin, too.”

Nick flicks his eyes to the screen, where there’s now tables full of people and some blokes in fur coats that look way too hot doing some complicated choreography. “Harry is in Gryffindor, isn’t he?”

“Please,” Louis huffs. “That boy is a Slytherin, and we all know it.”

“Harry Potter?” Nick is very confused. He’s _pretty sure_ Daniel Radcliffe was wearing a red tie just four seconds ago. And even he knows red means Gryffindor.

“Harry P- no, you daft stick! Harry Styles. Your best mate? My band mate? That Harry.”

Oh. Well, that makes a lot more sense. If Harry’s a Slytherin, it can’t be all that bad.

“You honestly don’t know what house you’re in?” Louis sounds curious.

“Lou,” Nick sighs. “I don’t give a shit about Harry Potter.”

A small gasp escapes Louis lips and then he carefully lifts Stinky up before he flips on his side again. Stinky immediately settles down in the little space Louis leaves him in front of his chest.

“I can’t believe you,” Louis mumbles into Nick’s sweatpants.

“Lou-“ he says, reaching out to comb his fingers through Louis’ hair again. The other man doesn’t resist, but he does hush him.

“Quiet. We’ll talk in the advert break.”

Nick manages not to snort at that. If there’s one person who’ll have trouble keeping quiet, it’s the one who’s curled up right on top of him.

Somehow Louis manages to make it through the next ten minutes without a peep, and as soon as the ITV logo pops up on screen, he’s up. Nick barely manages to lean back in time to avoid an emergency visit to the dentist on a Friday night, but Louis kisses his jaw in apology immediately.

“Sorry,” he whispers as he sits up next to Nick, leaning against his side. “Hand me the iPad, please.”

Nick would rather lean over and grab his tea that is really, most definitely, cold by now, but he complies and swipes the tablet off the table.

“What are you doing?” he asks when Louis immediately opens Google and starts typing.

“ _You_ are going to take a sorting quiz,” Louis mutters as he pulls up the search results. “I don’t care if you like Harry Potter or not, but I can’t sleep with someone who’s secretly a Hufflepuff. Do it for my sanity, please.”

Taking the iPad from Louis’ hands with a little sigh, Nick immediately scans the page.

“This is a Buzzfeed quiz.”

“It’s very accurate.”

“It’s _Buzzfeed_.”

“Shut up, and answer the questions, Grimshaw. I’ll make us some more tea.”

With one last sigh, Nick reads the first question. _You’ve made it to Hogwarts, which means you’ve already bought a wand from Ollivander’s. What material is at its core?’_

He doesn’t know what either three of the answers even _mean_ , so with a little shrug, he chooses Phoenix Feather. 

“You better be doing this seriously!” Louis yells from the kitchen. Nick drops his head on the back of the sofa, taking a deep breath. _You like him and all his little things_ , he reminds himself.

“I am,” he yells back, scrolling down to question two.

He’s only on his third question when Louis returns to the living, two cups of tea in his hand and a bag of salt and vinegar crisps between his teeth. 

“Doing alright?” he asks, carefully sitting down next to Nick.

“Think so. I have no idea what some of these things are, but some of them are pretty general, I guess.”

Louis hums at that, letting his head rest against Nick’s shoulder and his eyes back on the telly again. The height difference isn’t that much, but it really _really_ works. Nick quite likes it. He also quite likes to have some of those crisps, so he steals a hand when Louis’ isn’t looking.

“What’s Expelliarmus?” Nick mumbles while Ron and Harry are fighting on screen.

“Disarming Charm,” Louis mumbles back, hands around his tea and Pig next to him on the sofa. Nick has no idea where Stinky has ran off to, but he’ll be back he supposes.

“Protego?”

“Shield Charm.”

“Stupefy?”

“Nick-“

“You’re making me take this quiz, so the least you can do is answer my questions.”

Louis huffs. “Fine. Stunning Spell.”

“... Crucio?”

“I swear to god- Torture Curse. Now can you please be quiet?”

Nick hums, kissing Louis’ temple. “Quiet as a mouse. Enjoy your film.”

The next questions aren’t any easier, more lingo that he absolutely cannot decipher, but instead of bothering the man next to him, he does his own little bit of Googling. The internet is a magical place. Ha.

By the time the next advert break comes on, he’s completed the quiz and he hands over the iPad to Louis with a small grin.

“Oh, thank god,” Louis grins as he sees the ‘33% Slytherin’ at the bottom. “For a second I was afraid we’d have to break up.”

Nick tugs him on his lap, wrapping his arms around him. “You wouldn’t do that. You’d like me even if I was a Hufflepuff.”

“Maybe,” Louis admits, leaning back into him. “Niall’s a Hufflepuff, so I guess I could stomach it. Even if it means you’d be boring.”

“Are you saying you think I’m not boring now?” Nick grins into Louis back.

“I said no such thing,” Louis replies, wiggling around until he’s next to Nick again. It’s no surprise when Louis curls up into fetal position again and lies his head in Nick’s lap.

“Now, can we watch this again?” Louis says quietly from his lap, entangling his fingers with Nick’s. The fluttering in his stomach is ridiculous and completely unnecessary.

“Of course.” He knows that trying to bend over and come close to Louis head will only lead to failure, so instead he lets his free hand wander underneath the other man’s shirt and gives him a light squeeze.

He really tries to focus on the film, but having no clue as to what has happened in the previous half hour or even in the previous three films, he finds himself concentrating on the little noises and reactions coming out of Louis instead. He feels the soft humming along to the soundtrack, the way Louis’ jaw moves when he mouths along to the dialogue, the soft gasp he lets out as something explodes on screen.

Two advert breaks later, and Louis has gone uncharacteristically quiet. He’s got Stinky pressed to his front and Pig resting her head on his shins, but the three of them barely even move. When Nick strokes his hand through Louis’ hair, there’s no reaction.

“Love?” he whispers, tugging a little on a strand. No reaction. “Lou? Louis? You asleep?”

Harry Potter is almost drowning on the telly and Louis isn’t clutching Nick’s knee like he did when that dragon thing was going on, so he figures that’s a yes. He grabs his phone from the side table, careful not to jostle the head in his lap too much, and scrolls through Instagram. There’s a DM from Pixie that he’s an arse for watching Harry Potter without him, and for a second Nick wonders how she even knows, before he remembers the story that he posted a while back.

It’s forty-five minutes later, when Robert Pattinson is lying dead in a graveyard at the feet of Ralph Fiennes, that Louis sniffles and stretches his back.

“You back?”

“I wasn’t asleep,” Louis mumbles and then lets out a loud yawn.

“Of course not,” Nick says, squeezing Louis’ side. His fingers get slapped away. “I’m sure you remember everything that just happened.”

“I do,” Louis mutters, going on in detail about the previous scenes that Nick did not pay any attention to whatsoever. 

“How many times did you see this, actually?” Nick interrupts him. Louis throws him a look, sitting up straight and putting Stinky Blob back on the floor.

“I reckon about twenty five times? It’s Liam’s favourite too, so we used to watch it quite a lot on the bus when we were bored.”

Nick stares at him as he walks out the living room, the two dogs happily following him. He can’t imagine seeing a film _twenty five_ times. Sure, he’s seen Bridesmaids more than is probably healthy, but surely not twenty five times. 

“You coming, too?” Louis asks from the doorway, soft smile on his face.

“Don’t you want to finish watching this?” Nick asks in confusion, Harry Potter still screaming about something.

“Nah. Reckon it’d be more fun if we watched them all from the beginning, won’t it? Maybe you’ll like them this time.”

Nick highly doubts it, but if it means that he gets more quiet Friday evenings on the sofa with a pliant Louis, he will watch all seven or six or however many movies there are without complaining.

“If you’re sure...”

“I’m sure,” Louis states, tugging on Nick’s hand when he’s close enough. “Now, c’mon, there’s a bed upstairs and I’m very interested in your Chamber of Secrets.”

“I have no idea what that even means,” Nick mutters as he trails up the stairs behind Louis, making a mental note to lock the doors and let the dogs out in a bit.

“Sex, Nick. Sex.”

“Oh.”

When Louis starts hissing when he closes the bedroom door behind him, Nick falls face-forward on the bed, groaning. _You like him_ , he reminds himself again. _You like him and all his obnoxious little things_.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to chat to me about this fic, these boys, or anything else, really, find me at [tumblr](http://brokenpartsmightfit.tumblr.com/)


End file.
